ReadWriteWeb

Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time

Written by Richard MacManus / August 21, 2007 11:51 AM / 12 Comments

YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let's take a look at their most popular videos of all time.

I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular video of all time on YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006 and has since gone on to attract 55.8 Million views. It's had 60,476 comments, the first of which was: "That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!!". The comments for this video are still going strong today - the latest 10 comments have all come in the last 30 minutes, as of writing. Plus it's been favorited 252,082 times (making it the number 1 Top Favorited video of All Time).

According to a SMH article at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance. In many ways this is your typical YouTube video - a funny, goofy, short and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).

Incidentally, on Laipply's website there is an accompanying cat video - proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.

The next 3 most viewed YouTube videos are all music. Two of them professional, one amatuer.

2. Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend video, uploaded by RCARecords 5 months ago, has amassed 50 Million views.

3. My Chemical Romance's Famous Last Words is third, with 35M views.

4. Guitar, is fourth with 26M views. It's 5 minutes of Queen-like guitar licks, by some very talented dude.

Rounding out the Top 10:

5. SNL - Digital Short - A Special Christmas Box (comedy)

6. Tuğba Özay ve 250.000ci GarantiArkadas. com Üyesi (I have no idea what this is)

7. My Chemical Romance - Teenagers (music)

8. xxx (the title and promo image give the impression it is porn, but in fact it's a sappy Hong Kong pop video)

9. Beyonce ft. Shakira - Beautiful Liar (mv) (music)

10. Akon - "Don't Matter" (music)

Conclusion: Music Reigns Supreme

So in all, 7 of the top 10 are music - with 5 of those being professional videos. And OK Go is number 11 with their famously clever treadmill dancing video for Here It Goes Again. Indeed if you look at the Most Viewed Channels of all time, a lot of them are music companies. Universal Music is number 1 and My Chemical Romance number 3 (CBS is number 2).

If you're wondering where are all the 'America's Funniest Home Videos'-like ones, there is a laughing baby video at number 12.

So music and comedy make up the most popular videos on YouTube. And we can also see from this list that professional musicians and entertainers remain more popular than the so-called 'user generated' videos - at least at the toppermost of the poppermost.


5 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1550

YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let's take a look at their most popular videos of all time.

I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular ... Read More

» YouTube's Greatest Hits from jasonswadley.com

Read/Write Web yesterday examined YouTube's most popular videos. The results were somewhat surprising. Number one, which is a hilarious video, is The Evolution of Dance. The rest of this list? Professional musicians, music videos, and Shakira. The prom... Read More

10 Music Links worth Checking Out I spend some time today on popular social bookmark websites like digg or del.icio.us and decided to share the outcome of my quick search. I gathered some links that are definitely worth your time to check out. These ... Read More

This week we're trying something new with the format of the Weekly Wrapup. Instead of listing all of the posts we published over the past week, we'll filter them so you just get the best posts. The idea is that... Read More

Could micropayments be the key to monetizing YouTube? The New York Times has an interesting article today about the history and future of micropayments. "In December 2000, Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s interactive telecommu... Read More

Comments

Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts



RECENT JOBS


RWW READERS


TEXT LINK ADS


RWW PARTNERS

adaptiveblue

Yahoo Buzz